latest AMD drivers cause anomalies if OC'd in the slightest

collegeboy69us

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Jul 27, 2003
Messages
5,255
So I've been running my 7970 at 1200mV / 1200MHz core

never had a single problem - install the latest drivers yesterday and now even if I overclock to 1000Mhz core I get glitching in WINDOWS even from just moving a window around.

Disappears as soon as I hit "reset" in Afterburner.

Tried rolling back to 12.10 drivers and still no luck.

The card is good for 1200Mhz core speed -- wtf is going on here?

Kinda pisses me off they roll out with these drivers that have huge gains in efficiency but now cause corruption and crashing in Borderlands2 as well.

Any ideas?
 
I have not seen any other reports of this. A few friends updated drivers yesterday and their overclocks remained unchanged.
 
I can overclock just fine - clocks and all settings stick.

The problem is just graphical anomalies say in windows after applying the settings.

Move a window around and the screen "shakes" and had random lines sometimes. I installed and un-installed all drivers via the catalyst app in the "add/remove" programs.

Used CC cleaner as well --
 
Software OC with Trixx and AB can both cause this with newer drivers, more so with Trixx it seems. I personally get it with nearly all drivers after 12.4 on a 6950.

Try putting the machine to sleep when the desktop flickering starts and wake it back up, it clears it up every time for me. Only if I manually adjust the clocks in Trixx will it start again and I repeat the sleep/wake-up process.

So basically I sleep the machine once a day when I first boot up and it'll stay clear all day or until I have to reboot. Slightly annoying but it works for now.
 
dont use unofficial mode in AB, use /xcl startup option instead.

should fix the artifacting.
 
well I rolled back to 12.8 and all my issues are solved.

I'd love to have the performance boost of the latest - but just not worth it at this point.

I only play BF3 at 1920X1080 , same with Borderlands. One 7970 is enough (other is in a dedicated mining rig)

Will try the XCL thing tomorrow sometime -- just got the 12.8 drivers installed and cooking, and time for some gaming :)
 
My 7970s are still chugging along at 1200MHz just fine after the latest drivers. All I did was use ASUS GPU Tweak to unlock the CCC clock range and then AB to OC.
 
powerplay twarts you again

Six days here and you are already a pro huh?

Powerplay might be the issue - but it was never the issue in earlier drivers. While it's nice to see AMD drivers improving -- I'd have loved to see them not break something that already worked perfectly in previous versions.
 
well. Even though drivers are slowly (very, very, very slowly) improving over time i still can't say i'm happy.

They did fix the issues i had with the previous drivers, only to completely replace it with a new set of issues...

Explorer.exe crashes completely at random, even when just sitting idly at desktop. I'll try disabling ULPS tomorrow, see if that does anything. It seems to have been THE magic trick that solved alot of issues with previous driver releases anyway...

anno2070 still freezes when cf is enabled. At least they're no longer hardlocks, just the game freezing now...

skyrim still suffers from terrible, TERRIBLE micro stuttering (though i don't know if amd is really to blame here)

*sighs*

ps: coming from 12.8 beta or 12.9 i believe
 
My 7970s are still chugging along at 1200MHz just fine after the latest drivers. All I did was use ASUS GPU Tweak to unlock the CCC clock range and then AB to OC.

you don't even need to use the asus gpu tweak to unlocked the ccc range. Just use afterburner with the tag /xcl.

I don't have any issues with my 7870 crossfire running at 1200core/1400mem with the new 12.11 beta drivers.

Loving the performance boost!
 
run it in 12.11 and say your card is acting up and get an rma... if your willing to go through the hassle
 
at first i thought disabling ULPS fixed the issue. I played without crashing for about an hour and a half, then it happened again :\

As far as i know the only way to completely avoid crashes is by disabling crossfire but i don't want to do that every time i play anno 2070 :\

Disabling ULPS did solve the explorer.exe crashes (at least, so far).

sigh...
 
scrap that, explorer.exe is crashing again...

FFS AMD i'm really, really, really starting to get really pissed off here.

edit: installed 12.11 beta drivers, i don't know what else i can do...
 
Last edited:
if u need to disable xfire on a per game basis, try radeon pro...

what module is crashing?

error messages please...
 
that's the thing, i don't get any error messages.

anno just freezes, simple as that. Sound keeps playing as normal though.
after a couple of seconds it'll minimize and can not be maximized again.

I still have to find a clue as to why explorer crashes. It just happens. Even when nothing in particular is happening.

No error codes or messages. Nothing.
 
Anomalies?

686px-BMSResonanceCascade.jpg


Don't push it too hard. Better avoid a resonance cascade! :p
 
I've had it with these cards. My system just hardlocked on my while, you guessed it, playing anno 2070.
The only solution is to phyiscally remove one card from the system. So far that is the ONLY solution that seems to be working.

I think i'm going to sell one of them. I've completely had it. 11 months.
11 fucking months and i still can't use my cards to their fullest.
 
First for OP's problem.

Did you wipe your system before installing the new drivers? Like with driver sweeper?

Upgrades usually work, but sometimes they mess up registry settings etc. and cause problems. It's always safer to do a clean driver install, by following the following steps:

1.) Uninstall existing drivers. (Reboot)
2.) Run Driver Sweeper. (reboot)
3.) Install new drivers

To try to fix your issues, I would uninstall all GPU drivers you have installed, run driver sweeper and install the latest drivers again, and see if it helps.

If it doesn't, then uninstall again, run driver sweeper again, and install the previous drivers and see if that helps.

Also, What are you using to overclock?

Sometimes when the driver revision goes up, you need a new revision of your overclocking software.


Now, regarding those complaining with multi-GPU AMD setups, I hate to say it, but my impression is that problems like these are just a part of having multi-AMD GPU systems.

AMD GPU's on their own are typically rock solid, as are NVIDIA GPU's on their own. No clear leader from a stability perspective here.

When you add a second AMD GPU into the mix though, stuff tends to go down hill.

My single 6970 was great. Then I added a second one, and I had nothing but problems.

Nvidia doesn't seem to have this same problem (at least not as bad) when you run multiple GPU's.

I would love to see AMD fix this, but it is clear to me they have other priorities. The truth is, multi-GPU setups are only used by a very small minority of their customers. They are - of course - going to tackle issues encountered by more customers before they tackle the rarer ones.
 
well, my 4890's were rock solid. And i did expect some bugs and errors, that's normal when going multi gpu.

What i did not expect was it to cause system instability to this level. Where the simple fact of having 2 gpu's hooked up to your system, without even having cf enabled, would be enough to trigger hard locks and freezes.
 
well, my 4890's were rock solid. And i did expect some bugs and errors, that's normal when going multi gpu.

What i did not expect was it to cause system instability to this level. Where the simple fact of having 2 gpu's hooked up to your system, without even having cf enabled, would be enough to trigger hard locks and freezes.

Hard locks and freezes are not that common. More often its just worse performance than expected, graphical glitches, not working in some titles and crashes out of applications.

This may be a silly question, but what kind of power supply do you have?
 
a corsair 1050w (it's not the motherboard either btw, i had the same issue on my x58 system, this is a all new one).
 
Then dont overclock. Your card was sold to run at rated speeds, anything over you should be happy you get. If you dont get it, you are still getting what you paid for.
 
*scratches head*

I never stated they were overclocked. They've been so massively unstable since the beginning that overclocking never even crossed my mind.
 
*scratches head*

I never stated they were overclocked. They've been so massively unstable since the beginning that overclocking never even crossed my mind.
"latest AMD drivers cause anomalies if OC'd in the slightest "

Your title betrays you .....
 
aah no, i kinda hijacked this threat. Sorry for that.
The OP had indeed oc'ed his cards, i simply walked in here, hijacked his threat and made it my own.
 
if you use ab, turn off unoffical mode, and use the /xcl startup option instead.

that should fix your issues.
 
well, there seems to be hope after all. Just got this response from ubisoft's helpdesk (one of the few actually helpful responses i've gotten from any helpdesk lately)

Het probleem dat er zich bij u voordoet is bij ons bekend.
Er word aan een oplossing gewerkt.
Wanneer dit probleem is opgelost komt de oplossing op onze ondersteuning sectie van de website te staan

translation:

The issue you are experiencing is a known one. We are working on a solution.
When the issue has been resolved we'll ad it to the support section of the website
 
Then dont overclock. Your card was sold to run at rated speeds, anything over you should be happy you get. If you dont get it, you are still getting what you paid for.

As the OP -- I don't know if you just missed the part where the hardware itself is stable. The clocks were 100% Stable before any driver updates. We are talking uniengine, BF3, bitcoin mining... would run rock stable for hours and hours.

Soon as I updated the drivers, everything went to hell.

I'm more than aware that nothing overclock related is guaranteed - however the limits were already established, and AMD releasing drivers that crap out ... well the trend continues here.

By your logic I should just accept the fact that the latest drivers make my 1200Mhz (tested and confirmed in the months past) 7970 cards no longer work and I should be content to just leave 300Mhz worth of performance on the table? Doesn't sound very [H]ard to me.
 
25 posts about how terrible AMD is and then the final revelation it is a known problem with the fucking game. Noobs will read this thread and only catch the first 24. Awesome.
 
well, it's the first time ever that it's an issue on the game company's side.
Every other issue i had before was caused by amd's drivers. :\
 
I have the same problem as the op. As soon as I went to 12.10 the moment I try to do any OC with Trixx I get nothing but graphical glitches in Windows. Simply scrolling or moving a window causes like a display twitch.

I have tried beta driver 12.11 and also did a clean install but neither worked.

Looks like I'm going to have to go back to 12.8.

Have an HD6950


Yes I registered just to post this. lol
 
Back
Top